A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire, #1) Read online

  "Cut this shit out, Parker," Garrett threatened, starting to get pissed.

  Parker's fist shot out towards his face and Garrett's reflexes kicked in at the last minute as he jerked his head out of the way.

  "What's wrong, McCarthy?" Parker taunted, swinging with the opposite fist and narrowly missing Garrett's cheek. "Afraid I might kick your ass?"

  Garrett was too pissed off to laugh at her. She'd tried to punch him in the face.

  Twice.

  As Parker stood in place, bouncing from foot to foot, Garrett charged her and grabbed both of her wrists, yanking her towards him and holding her arms against his chest.

  They stood close, chest and thighs pressed together, breathing heavily and staring each other down for several long, tense minutes.

  "You lied to me," Garrett finally growled through clenched teeth. He shook her arms once, forcing her body to jerk as he punctuated his hurt. "Everything about you is a lie."

  Parker's body suddenly twisted to the side as she maneuvered behind him and Garrett felt a sharp kick to the back of his knees. Before he knew what was happening, he was upside down and then his back was slammed to the mat. The wind was instantly knocked out of him and Parker straddled him, holding his arms above his head.

  Garrett lay there stunned, trying not to pass out and wondering how a five foot seven little wisp of nothing that weighed all of a buck-twenty just knocked a Navy SEAL flat on his ass.

  Parker shifted her hips and tightened her hold on his arms, forcing Garrett's mind to focus on her chest that was pushed up against his and the heat between her thighs that warmed his stomach.

  "I didn't lie to you. I protected you. There's a difference," Parker said softly, her mouth inches from his.

  Garrett stared into her eyes and saw the pain and guilt and sadness swirling around.

  "You don't think it killed me every single time I couldn't really tell you where I was going or what I was doing? Do you think I enjoyed pretending to be someone else when every single moment I spent with you made me finally feel whole and alive and like maybe I didn't need to pretend anymore?"

  Parker's hold relaxed on Garrett's arms, but he didn't move.

  "Every single day for eight years you were the only one I ever wanted to be completely honest with."

  Parker was tired of the lies. If Garrett wanted the truth, she'd give it to him. She would give him anything he wanted.

  All he had to do was ask.

  Garrett watched as Parker slid her hands down the underside of his arms and pushed against his chest so she could sit up. He stared as she swung her leg off of him and stood. He didn't move as she looked down at him.

  "I signed my life away two months before I even met you and Milo. No matter how much I wanted to tell you, I couldn't.”

  Parker turned and started to walk away, only to stop and look back at him.

  "I failed at keeping Milo happy. I am not about to fail at finding out the truth about what happened to him. I don't want to fight with you, Garrett. I need you for this. I need my friend."

  Garrett stayed on the floor and watched her walk out of the gym. He replayed every single word she’d said to him, wondering if he had just imagined it considering he wanted to hear something like that from her for so long. Maybe the fire in her eyes was just due to the fact that her secret was finally out. Maybe the words she spoke came out in the heat of the moment and she hadn’t given them much thought.

  He could still feel the warmth from Parker’s body when she was spread out over him, and he could still feel the clench of her thighs on either side of his hips and the whisper of her breath against his lips. He forced himself off of the floor and shook the thoughts from his head.

  Parker said she needed her friend. No matter what was going on between them, no matter how hurt he was that she’d kept something like this from him, he could never deny her anything she asked.

  Garrett would turn off his feelings just like always and give Parker what she needed.

  He would be her friend.

  There was too much at stake with this mission to be anything else.

  Chapter Seven

  Parker walked back to the villa wondering if she had just screwed everything up with this job, with her friendship to Garrett, and with her life in general. So many thoughts and emotions about Garrett and Milo and what they each meant to her were swirling around inside of her and she felt like crawling out of her own skin. She used to be so clearheaded, so in control. Parker prided herself on being professional and put together. Regardless of what Garrett accused her of, everything about her wasn’t one big lie. She needed to hide her skills and her knowledge about certain things and was forced to tone down some of her confidence and turn up a bit of the “girliness” so no one would catch on to the talents she had talents that would make their heads spin. But inside she was still the same woman.

  She still loved looking at life through the lens of a camera. She still stopped everything she was doing if one of the Brat Pack movies was on, especially “The Breakfast Club”, and she still wondered if she had made the right decision every single day.

  At the time, she thought it was her only option.

  She was about to start her senior year of college in just a few months. The thought had thrilled her immensely. She was growing tired of the monotonous day-to-day activities of going to class, taking tests, writing papers, and going home to study only to get up and do it all over again the next morning. She always felt older than her peers and right now, going to class just seemed like a waste of time. While her friends were content to party every night of the week, hook-up with random guys, and joke about how they wished they could stay in college forever, Annabelle couldn’t wait to get out. She wanted to travel, tell stories with her pictures, and get paid to do what she loved.

  She chose the University of Maryland because it was her mother’s Alma Mater. And frankly, it was the farthest away from her father. He made it clear he didn’t want her around, and after eight months of putting up with his depression and anger, she gave him his wish. Luckily, she didn’t have to rely on him at all to get her through college. Her mother had made her the beneficiary on one of her life insurance policies, so as soon as she turned eighteen, she had plenty of money to live and go to school as long as she budgeted wisely and didn't waste funds on anything frivolous.

  For the first year she took to telling people that both of her parents were dead. It was easier than the truth. If people knew she had a father that hated her because she was still alive, it would make them talk about her more than they already did because she was quiet and kept mostly to herself, preferred books over kegs, therefor she must be weird.

  She tried to go the honesty route with the first guy she dated and when he asked, “What was wrong with you to make your father hate you so much?” She realized honesty wasn’t always the best policy. Being honest just made her feel like a failure—she failed at making her father love her.

  All of this just helped to reinforce her views on love and happily ever after and that they were just one big messy entanglement she didn’t need in her life. No man would ever want to settle down with a woman that couldn’t love him back and refused to give him all of herself because she was afraid of turning out like her father. No woman would ever really want to be her friend because they could sense she kept part of herself hidden to avoid being hurt. She had acquaintances and she had dates. She had people she hung out with and men who she slept with when her hands and toys couldn’t get her off. All of those things just made her an obvious choice for recruitment. And it made her decision that much easier.

  She didn’t have a family to depend on or turn to—she only had herself. Even though she was alone, deep down inside she was still the same person. If her father called her and told her he missed her and wanted her to come home, she would have dropped out of school to go back home. Regardless of how many miles she put between them, he was still her father. And he was still a tool that could be used again
st her.

  In the middle of July, Annabelle found herself sitting on a bench outside of the Arts and Sciences building doing some advanced research for her senior project. She was one of a handful of students who lived in campus housing year-round. Some of the professors usually felt sorry for the students that had nowhere to go during the summer months and gave them class syllabuses and outlines a few weeks early just to give them something to do on the quiet campus during the summer.

  She was busy reading a study from Stanford about the impact of new technology on still photography and didn’t notice the man who sat down beside her.

  He studied her for several long minutes, admiring the fact that she was so engrossed in her reading she hadn't even acknowledged his presence with a glance, a shift of her body, or a change in her breathing.

  Everything he'd learned about her intrigued him. She'd be good at this job, maybe even one of the best. Now all he had to do was use his power of persuasion and she'd be his.

  “Annabelle Elizabeth Parker, born April 25, 1981, daughter to Joe and Annie Parker,” the man spoke after a few minutes of silence.

  Annabelle’s head jerked up at the first sound of his voice, and her fear at the knowledge he possessed made her skin crawl. Parker didn't think he looked like a crazy stalker; he looked like a professor. He appeared to be in his mid-forties. He had on khakis, a blue and white checkered button-down, and well-worn Oxfords on his feet. All he was missing was the tweed jacket with leather on the elbows. The thought made Parker laugh to herself. She figured maybe he was one of her new teachers this year and someone from Admissions had pointed her out. She calmed her racing heart with that thought.

  “Do I know you?” she asked politely, just in case he really was one of her professors. She figured there was no sense pissing him off before the first day of class.

  “No, but I know you,” he said conspiratorially with a wink.

  Annabelle was raised by a cop; she grew up surrounded by other cops. She was taught at a young age not to trust or talk to strangers. This man looked at her like he knew everything about her. He studied her like he was looking for the hidden meaning of life. It left her feeling uneasy and just a little bit on edge.

  She started nervously gathering her books and stuffing them into her backpack that rested on the ground by her feet, keeping her head down to avoid looking the man in the eyes. Annabelle quickly stood up and flung the pack over one of her shoulders.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I have some friends I’m supposed to meet,” she told him as she started to back away.

  “Your mother died from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia when you were seventeen years old," the man said, easing his arm to the back of the bench. "She was diagnosed a year earlier, and for your entire senior year of high school, you sat by her bedside and watched her die. She and your father were high school sweethearts and were married for eighteen years, three months and nineteen days the day she died."

  The fake, polite smile Annabelle had previously plastered on her face quickly died.

  "You spent eight months trying to nurse your father back to the land of the living, or should I say, out of the bottom of the bottle—to no avail. On an average, for those eight months, he drank twenty-five ounces of whiskey every single day. Now, it’s closer to thirty-five. But you wouldn’t know that since the last time you spoke to your father was the day you left for college, almost three years ago, the day he told you for the hundredth time how much he hated the sight of you. Only that time he called you by your mother’s name and you smacked him across the face.”

  Annabelle’s blood had long since run cold as she stood there listening to a complete stranger tick off intimate facts about her life. She stood a few feet away from him, unable to move, clutching the strap of her backpack hanging from her shoulder so tight her knuckles turned white.

  He sat calmly on the bench with his ankle propped up on the opposite knee, studying his cuticles.

  “You have acquaintances, not friends. No one knows that your father is an alcoholic and you look so much like your mother you could have been twins. You have affairs, not love. There isn’t a man out there who could make you believe in happily ever after considering what you’ve witnessed with your father. You’ve slept with a total of four men and none of them know your middle name or the name of the town you grew up in which was Manchester Township, Michigan, by the way. Population: four-thousand-one-hundred-and-two.”

  The rage and the embarrassment Annabelle felt made her want to lash out at this man.

  “Who in the hell do you think you are? I’m calling the police, you psychotic fuck.”

  She turned, about to make a run for it, knowing a blue campus security phone was exactly one block away.

  “You just filled out an application for a student loan totaling twenty-three thousand dollars, which is currently in the process of being denied by the Financial Aid department. You have exactly two thousand and thirty six dollars in your bank account, the sum total of all that is left of your mother’s life insurance policy. The bottom line, Annabelle Parker, you can’t afford to finish college.”

  The man watched her stop in her tracks and knew he had her...hook, line, and sinker. He hoped he would get a raise for this one.

  She stood with her back to the man, fighting back tears. She’d looked at her bank account every day for the past six months, hoping it would magically quadruple in size. She knew she wouldn’t have enough money for her last year, room and board, and food. She did everything she could to stretch out the money, but photography supplies were expensive. Annabelle filled out the financial aid forms a few weeks ago, praying that something good would finally come her way. She briefly wondered if this guy was from the Financial Aid department and that was why he knew so much about her. But Annabelle was pretty certain it wasn't a job requirement to know the sexual history of all the applicants.

  Annabelle was lost in thought, something she shouldn’t have been with a stranger that knew entirely too many personal details about her sitting just a few feet away. His arm suddenly came around her from behind, causing her to jump in fear. She was amazed by the way he was able to sneak up on her so quietly.

  He held a large manila envelope in front of her and spoke quietly into her ear.

  “There’s some interesting information in here, Miss Parker. Look it over. I’ll be in touch.”

  Since she refused to take the envelope or anything else he might have offered; it dropped down to the ground in front of her as he walked away. She lost track of time as she stood there in the middle of campus shaking with fear. She didn’t understand how someone could know so much information about her. He had known how many men she slept with and about that awful day in her father’s kitchen when she left for college. No one should know that information, and it scared the hell out of her that this man had so casually walked up to her in a public place and listed these things off the top of his head like it was no big deal.

  Annabelle quickly looked around to see if anyone was near before dropping to the ground, picking up the envelope, and shoving it in her backpack. She had run the whole way back to her dorm, shaking with apprehension at what could possibly be in the envelope and knowing that if that man already knew so much about her, and could locate her in the middle of a huge campus, he would easily be able to find her again.

  Annabelle had unlocked her door with trembling hands, sat down on the bed in her dorm, and tore open the flap of the envelope, dumping the contents on top of her bedspread. At least fifty pictures slipped out and flopped down to the bed in a scattered pile. She threw the envelope to the floor and picked up one of the pictures. It was a black and white photo of her father. A man twice his size stood behind him, holding his arms behind his back while another man stood in front of him, his fist frozen in time against her father’s cheek.

  She threw that one down on the bed and picked up another, this one in color. It showed her father walking down the steps of her old home, his face badly beaten. On
e eye was black and blue, he had a split lip, a cut above his eyebrow, and a bandage over his nose that most likely signified it was broken.

  Annabelle tossed that one aside and picked up yet another, and another, and another until she had looked through each and every picture. They were all more or less the same. Her father with his face beat to hell or her father looking scared to death while he talked with some man in a suit. Each photo was dated, not one was a duplicate. The earliest photo was one of her father exchanging money with the same man in a suit. It was dated six months before her mother died.

  Annabelle had no idea what any of this was supposed to mean. She didn’t understand what her father had gotten himself into or why she cared. She shoved the pictures aside and grabbed the small note card that had fallen out with them. Written in the middle of the card in block letters was a name: Anthony Capuano.

  Annabelle had flipped the card over, hoping for something else, but the back was blank. She scrambled off of the bed and over to her desk, powering on her laptop. She did a Google search for Anthony Capuano. There were six-thousand-four-hundred-and-nineteen results.

  The first link had provided took her to the New York Times and told her all she needed to know.

  Parker let herself into the villa, grabbing a sock to stick between the door jam and the lock so Garrett could get back in. She peeled off her sweaty clothes as she made her way to the bathroom for a quick shower. As she stood under the warm spray and let the tension wash away, Parker thought back over everything that happened that day in college. She would never allow herself to second guess her decision. It had been the right one for her to make at the time. The job had taught her so many things—things she’d never forget and things she wished she could forget. Most of all, she wished she could forget the items in the envelope. Garrett could blame her for lying about the job all he wanted, but no matter what, she was still the same person inside, the same person who would do anything for those she loved.